Mediated realities. The pictures inside of people's heads. Life worlds. Bonding social capital. Lifestyle enclaves. The Big Sort. Red State and Blue State America. The color line. Residential housing segregation. Dense and exclusive social networks. The purpling of America.

Social scientists have developed an extensive vocabulary in order to discuss how people live in their own bubbles, and are exposed to a very narrow slice of the broader world. In matters of politics, and the Common Good, this means that what should be clear, commonly understood, and shared priors are often anything but--instead, they are made contingent, circumstantial, and open to debate and evaluation.

These gaps in experience can result in humorous, albeit very revealing, gaffs: Mitt Romney's joke about a 10,000 bet or his suggestion that young people can easily borrow 20,000 dollars from their parents and start a business. Romney had no malignant intent here--he simply does not have any friends who are poor, working class, or even barely middle class. His life world, despite his vast wealth, is limited, by choice, to those like him.

In discussions of race and racial inequality a similar dynamic also holds. While American popular culture is dependent on a type of insincere and false multiculturalism and diversity (black and brown bodies are present, but the lives behind them are often flattened and caricaturized; the white gaze still operates in the popular imagination), day to day life and society remain extremely segregated. For some, this is a result of "Whitopian" dreaming and deliberate action where the good life is defined precisely by one's ability to avoid people of color.

For others, segregation and racially homogeneous friendship and social networks are either 1) just a matter of life because race and class are intimately related to each other in America or 2) the result of a type of rational ignorance where many white folks are happy and secure knowing that they can live a quite normal and productive life (one that is guilt free) in which they will not have to encounter people of color as their bosses, neighbors, teachers, confidantes, or friends--unless they so choose.

For example, according to public opinion surveys a significant majority of whites believe that America is a meritocracy, racism is a thing of the past, black people have an equal chance at success in the United States if "they just work hard," black children and white children have the same life chances in America, and the goals of the civil rights movement have been attained.

In addition, 80 or so percent of white respondents say that they have a close friend who is a person of color. If one does even some cursory math, this would suggest that blacks for example have at least 3 close white friends in their social network. Perhaps most absurdly, a significant percentage of respondents in a recent survey believe that racism "against" white people is a bigger problem than discrimination against racial minorities.

Given all of the overwhelming and readily available evidence to the contrary for how race over-determines life chances (and the advantages of Whiteness), this data suggests that a majority (more than 50 percent) of the white American public is in the midst of a type of mass delusion, denial, and psychosis.

In all, because shared experience(s) is/are bisected by the color line, what remains is a veil of ignorance. Thus, the existence of racism, and deep veins of white supremacy in America, are reduced to an "opinion" as opposed to one of the most documented and well-researched facts in contemporary social science. Racism is real. It is not something that people of color imagine and make up for their own narrow and personal "gain."

We are not crazy when we say that racism is killing us. We are not delusional or insane when we say that race still matters. Three recent news items help to remind us that reality is biased in the favor of our standing hypothesis that racism is real, even in post-racial Age of Obama America.

More benign, but no less problematic in its implications, the Russel Sage foundation has released a compendium of research on the relationship between race and class in America. Some of their findings include:

Stereotypes are pervasively used in cross-class encounters. Brain imaging scans show that rich people are often seen as competent but cold and untrustworthy, according to studies from psychologist Susan Fiske. By contrast, poor people are viewed as lacking both warmth and competence, and are often blamed for their poverty. In one study, Princeton students reported their reactions to a peer who was described alternately as rich or poor, and lazy or hardworking. Respondents gave strongly negative reactions to both the lazy and hardworking poor peer; by contrast, the work ethic of the affluent peer did not polarize ratings.

Your social class may influence how you are racially identified. Individuals are less likely to be identified as white and more likely to be identified as black if they have ever experienced markers of low socioeconomic status such as incarceration or unemployment, according to psychologists Diana T. Sanchez and Julia A. Garcia.

Recently, the W.K. Kellog Foundation's Healing for Democracy conference brought together some of the leading scholars and researchers on social inequality and public policy. Apparently, the collective subconscious of American society remains sick with the disease of racism:

Hinojosa said it is “irrefutable” what is happening in America today. “We are clearly becoming a more multicultural, multiracial, mixed country. That is the future.” But she noted that the changing demographics are causing tension and fear among the majority. “There’s an element of unconsciousness there,” she said, “but there’s also an element of consciousness which is saying – at this moment I’m in the world of being a non-Hispanic Anglo…I don’t want to become a minority.”

One panelist, Dr. David Williams, professor of African and African American Studies at Harvard University, cited studies documenting that when Latinos and African Americans were treated by physicians for a broken bone in their leg, they received pain medication significantly less often than white patients with the same injury

“How on earth do we make sense of this?” Dr. Williams asked. “How is it possible that for the best trained medical workforce in the world to produce… care that appears to be so discriminatory? The answer: unconscious discrimination. Research shows that when one holds a negative stereotype about a group and meets someone from that group, without their conscious awareness, it is an unconscious process and it is automatic. They will treat that person differently and honestly not know that they did it...”

Dr. Gail Christopher, vice president for program strategy at the Kellogg Foundation, explained that centuries of a racial hierarchy in America has left its mark on our society, especially pertaining to how people of color are perceived by whites. “Our society assigns value to groups of people,” she said. “It is a process that is embedded in the consciousness of Americans and impacted by centuries of bias.”

During the discussion today, panelists shared insights demonstrating how people make unconscious decisions. Dr. Phillip Goff, assistant psychology professor at UCLA, showed examples of how law enforcement officials can be motivated by unconscious bias not only to race, but also to what they perceive as threats to their masculinity.

The people that are supposed to protect us are in fact killing us. The caregivers who should do no harm and take care of us when we are sick are instead leaving us to suffer. These facts ought not to be surprising.

Nevertheless, they are no less damning.

Ultimately, I don't blame white folks for practicing rational ignorance about the grotesque realities of white supremacy in post-civil rights America. If by birthright and color, I could choose to ignore such matters I would too. Such a choice is unethical. However, I would be saved much mental energy. God and fate have not allowed me such a privilege and luxury. I would not want it any other way.

Share widely. Trust me, conservative defenders of Zimmerman will not get the pointed satire; many will be moved to tears by Zimmerchrist; who knows, maybe a few of them will speak in tongues at the sight of such a holy object.

Given our conversation about George Zimmerman as Right-wing American Jesus, Weird Beard's keen image was divinely timed in its offering. Zimmerchrist may actually replace my previously favorite depiction of JC soul brother number one as a gun-toting, cowboyesque redneck.

At this point in our national ordeal, tragedy has succumbed to absurdity. In all, these matters have devolved into a three ring traveling circus worthy of PT Barnum and the flim flam artists of the early 20th century.

Zimmerman has offered a bizarre “apology” for killing an unarmed teenager that makes his death sound more like an act of God and random accident, than the result of one person’s desire to irresponsibly play vigilante toy cop. Thugs have assaulted innocent people as “retribution” and “revenge” for Trayvon Martin. George Zimmerman’s defenders on the Right have magically discovered a deep love for the health and safety of black folks, as well as a profound concern about “black on black” crime. The reverse racists, racism deniers, and conservative adherents to the trinity cult of “gun rights,” white racial resentment, and black criminality have reimagined Zimmerman as a martyr, victim, and mascot.

This week, Reuters news service opened a new exhibit in this perverse roadshow. Chris Francescani’s profile of Zimmerman has all of the elements of a great spectacle, one that draws upon old anxieties and tropes about race in American life, while also adding some new twists. According to Reuters, George Zimmerman is apparently “part-black” through his great grandfather from Peru. Moreover, Francescani has innovated upon the classic “best black friend defense” for those who are accused of acting with racial animus, by profiling how Zimmerman’s grandmother was a babysitter for two African-American children.

In this tale, there is also an unnamed black informant who legitimates Zimmerman’s racial profiling of Trayvon Martin. She paints a portrait of a neighborhood under siege by black hooligans and thieves. Thus, in this narrative, George Zimmerman was a “reasonable” person who acted in good faith, as he meted out his version of justice on a person he decided was “suspicious” by virtue of his identity as a teenager who happened to be black, male, and walking down the street.

Apparently, in “post-racial” America, blood quantum, melanin, DNA, and familial associations are now immunizers for any charge or assertion that racism could have played a role in George Zimmerman’s decision to hunt down and kill Trayvon Martin.

Historically, race has been made, reproduced, and created in bizarre and absurd episodes such as the above. In the landmark Thind and Ozawa cases during the first decades of the twentieth century, Asian and Sikh Americans were denied citizenship in the United States by an arbitrary standard in which the Supreme Court famously decided that being “white” was determined by the common sense norms held by the average white man. Scientists studied skulls, bones, brain size, and posture in order to rank racial and ethnic groups in a hierarchy where “whites” were naturally and always on top. In the year 1915, during the height of Jim and Jane Crow and the KKK’s reign of terror, Leo Frank, a Jew, was convicted of murder and subsequently lynched for killing a white girl (an accusation he denied) in a show trial that hinged on the testimony of Jim Conley, a black man.

At present, America is at a demographic crossroad. With the “browning” of America and the growth of Latinos and Hispanics as America’s largest “minority” group, popular assumptions about identity and race are being challenged and renegotiated. For example, Latinos and Hispanics are an ethnic and cultural group; but they can be of any race. Many in the public are apparently unable to comprehend this fact.

George Zimmerman is an object lesson in these dynamics. The efforts to defend Zimmerman through appeals to his “racial identity” are one more part of a long and bizarre national play. In some contexts he is a Hispanic and honorary white person, who, like white conservatives, is a “victim” of black people in mass, and bogeyman activists and “race hustlers” such as Al Sharpton. Here, Zimmerman is framed as some type of model minority and “good” Hispanic who, like white people in the Age of Obama, is oppressed, a victim of reverse racism and racial hysteria.

Ironically, the very same conservatives who embrace and amplify Zimmerman’s Hispanic identity for the purposes of smearing Trayvon Martin, share a political worldview that is explicitly xenophobic and hostile to non-whites. This reality has been repeatedly demonstrated by Right-wing populist rhetoric such as “real America,” and “take our country back,” its adherents’ support of such conspiratorial fictions as birtherism, and their embrace of racial profiling, deportation of “illegal” aliens, as well as the elimination of Ethnic and Chicano studies programs in Texas and Arizona.

For the conservatives who have embraced George Zimmerman as a martyr and victim, his racial status is circumstantial, contingent, and wholly dependent on the political whims and needs of a given moment. Ultimately, if George Zimmerman was accused of hunting down and killing either a white teenage boy (or God forbid, a young white woman!) in exactly the same circumstances, his “Hispanic” identity would be turned into a liability and a sin, his honorary whiteness quickly and inexorably revoked.

As the public discourse surrounding the killing of Trayvon Martin has revealed, many Americans still have a facile, flat, and thin understanding of how racism is more than mean words and deeds. It is complex, structural, and operative in many, if not most, areas of American life and culture.

However we choose to navigate the circus and spectacle that the Trayvon Martin saga has become, several facts remain true. By carrying a gun, George Zimmerman, self-styled vigilante and pretend cop, violated the rules of the block watch group he so obsessively fawned over, and in which he apparently had a near pathological investment in. George Zimmerman ignored police directives as he stalked and harassed an innocent person. George Zimmerman decided that Trayvon Martin was “suspicious” and guilty by association because he committed the “crime” of being black, male, and wearing a hooded sweatshirt on a rainy evening. And George Zimmerman made a series of choices that resulted in the unnecessary killing of a seventeen year old boy.

Unlike George Zimmerman, Trayvon Martin will never be afforded a detailed accounting of his life such as the one offered by Reuters. He is dead, killed in the street by George Zimmerman. Trayvon Martin’s life was stolen, not free to have the ups and downs, successes and failures that Zimmerman experienced in his 28 years (and in the decades likely to come). Trayvon Martin’s family is left asking what could have been. The answer was denied them by one man’s series of poor choices, and his obsession with “these assholes” that “always get away.”

Regardless of the color or race which George Zimmerman may identify with, one thing remains certain: he is a vigilante killer.

I sat on the bus. Tired, I waited, trying to read as my conveyance pulled away from Michigan Avenue, bringing me home to Hyde Park, blocks away from Obama's home. Weary with sleep, I heard a drum beat in my ear. It continued. Incessant. Unapologetic. Moving. Exciting.

All of us looked to our left. He was there. Riding in a white Cadillac. Both his driver and bodyguards were dressed in white; their hair was permed; the suits clean and pressed.

The specter had traded his horses and chariot for a car, he smiled, keeping pace, the Permed One looked at me and asked a simple question: "Why so long Brother Chauncey? You have been the keeper of my flame and an acolyte in my church! Why have you not held a revival? Two years? Why brother! Have you become so self-important as to have forgotten from which you came?"

Shocked, I looked down. Embarrassed. The burning bush of We Are Respectable Negroes had appeared once more. Guttural, in speech that only a few can understand, he asked, "as you approach 1 million visitors in these next few months, why have you forsaken me?" Do you believe that you are greater than our church and my calling? I will humble you!"

Yes, it has been two long years. Several of you have asked for his return. In our trying and most challenging times he answers. I must obey. The Church of James Brown is upon us; the Permed One has commanded me to bring him forth once more. I will confess my sins of Blackness without shame.

In our sacred words:

"Oh most amazing James Brown, greatest of all negroes, I offer you my lies and secret shames. All these years I have yearned to share those things which I have pretended to like and adore in the name of being authentically Black.I cast my words into the wind so that you can take our secrets and make these shames unintelligible as you sing them for all time in your unique and spirited language."

As one of the elders of the Church of James Brown I shall offer myself as an example of humility and vulnerability as I send my words into the wind:

I, Chauncey DeVega, am tired of writing about Trayvon Martin. I will continue to do so as much remains to be said on such a tragic and woeful incident;

I, Chauncey DeVega, would vote for Barack Obama again, despite his accomplishments or record. Conservatives, white people, and their allies consistently support white candidates who have failed for no other reason than because of said candidates' appeals to white racial resentment and racism. I am no more noble than they are. I am not high minded or pure. I am a believer in realpolitik.

I, Chauncey DeVega, observe that we are our own best friends, we are our own worst enemies, we are our best advocates, we often do not listen enough to each other.

I, Chauncey DeVega, refuse to watch "black" sitcoms, movies, or other popular culture made for "us."

I, Chauncey DeVega, a black pragmatist and black nationalist, am also worried that conservatives may be right about the soft bigotry of low expectations. This troubles me.

Come my friends and unburden yourselves! The Church of James Brown is in session until Sunday. Pray tell, share the darkest secrets of negritude, those feelings, impulses, and thoughts that you want to purify yourself of. The mirror works both ways, there are many secrets that white folks and others hold as well regarding these matters of race and identity, Brother James hears them as well. He is a loving man.

I do not know how many will come to the alter and reveal themselves. I offer the Church of James Brown to all of you regardless of your fears or worries. He loves and welcomes you all. Simply bow down and touch the robe. By doing so, your life will be transformed.

My children, brothers, sisters, and friends, come forth. Brother James will bring you under his cloak.

Who gets to decide what is black popular culture? Must we always embrace the good and discard the bad? Or is the "black" in black popular culture something multivalenced, complex, at times enriching and artful, and in other moments, debased and grotesque?

One of the perils of the digital age is that black popular culture (and that of other communities) can be widely circulated, subverting the policing of borders and boundaries. Conversations that were once confined to barbershops and hair salons in the black counter-public are now a click away, available on Youtube, for any person with an Internet connection.The Black Superpublic is real--the gatekeepers are unable to contain access and argue for an "authentic" black voice.

The young women who are "getting their hustle" on by dancing in Mr. Ghetto's Walmart video have no shame in their game. I wonder if these "queens" understand that while their performance may be some type of "expressive culture" offered up by people who happen to be "black," (I would suggest) it is not in fact Black Popular Culture.

These are old arguments about the politics of black representation that go at least back to the Harlem Renaissance, the New Negro, and Zora Neale Hurston. The great cultural theorist Stuart Hall masterfully outlined these complexities of the black in the black popular culture when he famously observed that:

However deformed, incorporated, and unauthentic
are the forms in which black people and black communities and traditions appear
and are represented in popular culture, we continue to see, in the figures and
the repertoires on which popular culture draws, the experiences that stand
behind them. In its expressivity, its musicality, its orality, in its rich,
deep, and varied attention to speech, in its inflections toward the vernacular
and the local, in its rich production of counternarratives, and above all, in
its metaphorical use of the musical vocabulary, black popular culture has
enabled the surfacing, inside the mixed and contradictory modes even of some
mainstream popular culture, of elements of a discourse that is different --
other forms of life, other traditions of representation...

It is this mark of difference inside forms of
popular culture -- which are by definition contradictory and which therefore
appear as impure, threatened by incorporation or exclusion -- that is carried
by the signifier "black" in the term "black popular
culture." It has come to signify the black community, where these
traditions were kept, and whose struggles survive in the persistence of the
black experience (the historical experience of black people in the diaspora),
of the black aesthetic (the distinctive cultural repertoires out of which
popular representations were made), and of the black counternarratives we have
struggled to voice.

Here, black popular culture returns to the ground I defined
earlier. "Good" black popular culture can pass the test of
authenticity -- the reference to black experience and to black expressivity.
These serve as the guarantees in the determination of which black popular
culture is right on, which is ours, and which is not.

Black people ought not to always operate under the assumption and threat of the White Gaze. But, where is the critical intervention and reflection which suggests that Mr. Ghetto's world of culture and style may not be the best way to represent the black community? Or are matters of representation purely secondary to pleasure?

I am very excited for this weekend's pay-per-view where John Cena and Brock Lesnar will finally get it on here in Chicago. The WWE has done a great job these last few months of finally, after all of these years, creating a "must watch" feeling on Monday nights. We will never return to the heyday of the Monday Night Wars. But, Raw's 3 hour special earlier this week was one of the best shows in recent memory--I have gotten into the habit of fast forwarding through the show--and was more than worth watching from beginning to end.

If I had the book Brock Lesnar would lose to John Cena this Sunday. After utterly beating the living life out of Cena, Lesnar would get distracted for a moment and get taken advantage of by Cena for a quick pin, and what was a decision aided by a sympathetic referee. The follow-up would then be that Brock actually had pity for poor old John. This angle could also play nicely off of Steve Austin's genius loss to Mikey Whipwreck back in ECW, where the former just got more over, and developed the "Stone Cold" character more fully, after such an improbable turn of events.

The build up to Cena-Lesnar also has another compelling dimension to it, one that many pro wrestling fans are likely loathe to admit. In much the same way that Star Trek: The Wrath of Khan was an open love letter of gay obsession and slash fantasy in which Kirk and Khan can be imagined as star crossed lovers, there is something mighty obsessive and homoerotic about Lesnar's "desire" to "destroy" John Cena. Professional wrestling (as most male dominated sports) has always been homo-social: the angle between Brock and Cena is bordering on the transparently homoerotic and is a tale of same sex loving, destructive lust.

Popular culture is compelling precisely because of how audiences can reimagine and reinterpret texts for their own purposes, and on their own terms. To point, watch Lesnar's first promo and then compare it to the legendary "Booty Warrior" Fleece Johnson of Lock Up fame. You tell me, is there not something mighty similar between Lesnar and Fleece Johnson's energy here?

Doubling down, Lesnar's most recent interview is colored by wonderful, gay obsessive love. This is actually a complement to Brock Lesnar as he is channeling emotions that are utterly exaggerated and melodramatic...but nonetheless real. Brock is playing the leather daddy power top in this segment.

Tuesday, April 24, 2012

The white family is in crisis from the cradle to the grave. This week, we are highlighting two related incidents of white crime. As our motto suggests, if you see something, you should say something! White crime only flourishes when good people do nothing.

In Michigan City, Indiana two elementary school aged white children savagely beat and throttled the elderly bus monitor and driver who were given the sacred responsibility of safely transporting them to school. As is common with white crimes, the media has conspired to play down this incident, and is not showing the public pictures of these young criminals in training.

These behaviors are learned at home; it is likely the parents were aware of their childrens' criminal nature and did nothing to intervene or correct it. The bus beat down is not new. White boys and teens habitually commit horrible violence in schools. They have a long track record of school shootings and mass murder including the infamous Columbine incident. White violence is infectious and has even corrupted good "model minorities" such as Korean-Americans (see the Virginia Tech shooter who killed 32 people and wounded scores more).

Instead of demanding that white teen homicidal maniacs are imprisoned, the white community engages in "soul searching" as they try to "make sense" of how their little angels could commit such heinous deeds. This is evidence of a pathologically violent culture that has spawned serial killers, mass murderers, and domestic terrorists.

Charles Edward Reese is our second white criminal of the week. He is a pervert of the first order. Because the family and home are the first spaces in which children are socialized, the criminal behavior of white young people should not be a surprise. White children are learning these anti-social values from their mothers and fathers.

With the failure of white communities, and their moral decline as documented by Charles Murray in his new book Coming Apart, the behavior of white men such as Reese is increasingly common. At present, white people are the majority of child rapists and child murderers. They are also more likely to be pedophiles. Their dominance of these categories of wanton and predatory crime can only be expected to grow in the future.

Tragically, Charles Edward Reese is the tip of a pathological white sex culture that imperils all Americans. Be careful. Do not trust your children around white people--especially white men--as they are capable of anything.

The full story follows:

COVINGTON, La. (CBS Houston) – Federal authorities say a man is behind bars after he paid women to have sex with their children and animals.

Charles Edward Reese, the former chief financial officer of Champagne Beverage, is facing charges for the unlawful production of child pornography after paying hundreds of thousands of dollars to women who, in exchange, would provide Reese with sexual videos involving them with their own children.

According to the Slidell Sentry, Reese conned at least two women into sending him child pornography videos of an explicit and incestuous nature.

The money – amounting to over $750,000 – was reportedly sent to one Vidar, Texas, woman in exchange for videos that featured her children, ages 2 and 6, and her 9-year-old sister engaging in sex acts with her.

The Federal Bureau of Investigations became involved when the site hosting the video, Photobucket.com, became aware of the September 2011 video upload and alerted authorities. Similar videos from the same user were also found.

Reese would also send notes with his payments, some of them demanding the woman’s participation.

“If you don’t get online tomorrow morning with both of them and do what I want you to this will be the last time you ever hear from me no matter what your needs are,” a note sent with one $525 payment allegedly stated, according to the Sentry. “You have screwed me enough for a lifetime of misery.”

The woman is now deceased.

The FBI also found out that Reese sent a reported $2,500 to the woman’s adult sister, in an attempt to keep her quiet after she sent him messages about his actions, and another $7,900 to an unrelated second Texas mother.

The second woman, who is currently incarcerated on child endangerment charges, told the FBI that she took sexual cell phone pictures of her daughter, who is less than 7 years old, and sent them to Reese.

In both cases, the women referred to Reese as “Chuck.”

Reese was reportedly booked at the St. Tammany Parish Jail, where he remained as of earlier this week. His employment at Champagne Beverage was also terminated as of early last month.

Monday, April 23, 2012

The question of extremism seems an important one in evaluating the white
racial frame. It is easy for me to feel swaths of heroism emanating
from this white abolitionist, but I imagine being alive at the time, I
would do little but hold a candle in my heart for such causes.

I
think the thing that I do more often (as pretty much a cop-out for
genuine political engagement) to take ownership of my whiteness is to
accept that any violence done unto me is in some sense deserved by my
complicity and engagement which enhance and encourage inequality in many
ways. How do both white and black alike come to terms with these
things? Changing the system from inside the system while benefiting
from the system seems to be an insane perspective to take....

Do you have any perspective on all this kind of white guilt?

I take all readers' comments here on WARN seriously. If folks take the time to post a comment or email me, I always proceed with good faith. If someone is a "troll" I entertain their questions because although they may be in autopilot conversation derailing talking points mode, these people are still speaking for some part of our collective consciousness. Yes, I may dismiss their views as ideologically driven foolishness; however, trolls and the talking point commentariat are in fact channeling the deeply held beliefs of no small part of the American public. As such, they demand analysis--if not necessarily--full engagement.

By comparison, there are comments like those offered by Adam GH in response to my first post on the late Joel Olson. Adam's honesty about white guilt was very moving. It was also quite provocative and unsettling. Adam's sharing also deserves more conversation and processing. Thus, my bumping it up for discussion.

The expression of white guilt, especially from those who are legitimately invested in anti-racism and a struggle for shared humanity across the color line, is a common sentiment. I am troubled by white guilt for a variety of reasons. Empathy, even in its must honest and extreme forms, can lead to a moment of self-reflection and praxis. But, can it become crippling? Moreover, how does the language of "guilt"--which implies shame, responsibility, ownership, or culpability--problematically center the White subject in a critical conversation about race and racial ideologies? Ultimately, does "white guilt" do the the work of white privilege and sustain (an ironic type of) white supremacy?

Understanding one's relationship to the historical and contemporary structures, as well as individual level processes which create, sustain, and reproduce social inequalities along lines of gender, class, race, and sexuality, is key if we are to radically transform American society in the interests of the Common Good. For example, taking ownership over those moments when we choose to (or not) confront white supremacy is different from feeling guilty over how we may be situated as individuals relative to the lived realities of privilege and inequality.

Turning the gaze inward for a moment: I do not feel guilty for being a heterosexual man. I do however acknowledge how I benefit from sexist and homophobic social norms and arrangements of power. Should I feel guilt? Of course not. I have a choice regarding how I choose to intervene against heteronormativity and sexism. I am culpable to the degree that I act with cowardice and/or behave unethically in such moments where I actively (or through tacit consent) benefit from such disparate arrangements of social and political power.

To my eyes, white guilt is combustible and frightening. At its core is anger and rage, often internalized, waiting for a moment to spew forth. There is an odd parallelism here: white supremacists and their more polite conservative kin use appeals to white guilt in order to mobilize their race hatred and racial resentment for political ends; strident anti-racists, some of whom also happen to be liberal (white) racists, use white guilt as a type of self-flagellation. Through their self-abuse, white guilt becomes a way of recentering Whiteness (with its insecurities and guilt) as the default beginning of conversations about white racism.

In all, I would suggest that in our dialogue(s) about white guilt that we foreground the following premises:

1. White guilt is real for those who possess it. These are legitimate and real emotions that cannot be dismissed or disregarded if people of color want to have substantial and critical conversations about race and the reproduction of racial ideologies with our white brothers and sisters;
2. White guilt is often a deflection deployed by whiteness, and those who possess/are invested in white privilege as a means to evade substantive conversations about white supremacy;
3. White guilt is a type of actualized white privilege;
4. White guilt should be processed and discussed; white guilt and managing the emotional hurt of white people should not be a central part of anti-racist discourse and practice;
5. White racism hurts white people; white guilt also hurts white people.

Du Bois talked about a "twoness" or sense of double consciousness in black folks that comes from living in a society which does not value your humanity. Although oriented differently, white guilt is a schism of the internal white self that comes from realizing that society over-values you, gives privileges, opportunities, and resources for no other reason than the arbitrary distinction that a given person happens to be categorized as "white" in this historical moment.

Sunday, April 22, 2012

Capitalism is deftly adept at commodifying culture. It is a creative beast, a hungry octopus grabbing up anything from which it can make a profit. As such, the buzzards and carrion eaters are swirling around the public corpse that is the Trayvon Martin saga. I understand that brothers and sisters got to get their hustle on. Tragically, I do not think that the lumpen black proletariat embodied by "Mr. Ghetto" seem to understand that foolishness such as linking this video to Trayvon Martin's case--in an effort to get his song some attention--actually emboldens the supporters of George Zimmerman.

Some real talk for a moment. Frankly, who wouldn't shoot dead (metaphorically of course) the hooga mugga ign't wannabe thugs such as Mr. Ghetto and his kin (not the real folks, but rather the very idea and habitus they represent)...or at the very least get as far away from them as possible, praying that they do not get a Section 8 voucher and move in next door?

And yes, I know many black and brown strivers who would cosign that question.

Political art is so very difficult a craft and vocation. This is especially true in regards to commercial Southern New Age Race Minstrel "hip hop." Form and content work together to communicate meaning. Mr. Ghetto's "art" is an object lesson in why I prefer my MC's to talk about money, cash, hoes, and other assorted fantasies of the ghettocentric imagination. Folks should write about what they know: it is the first rule of being a successful author/singer/artist.

Unfortunately, Mr. Ghetto's talents as an MC are handicapped in this regard as well. It would seem that his creative gifts are rather limited:

Unless an MC is especially qualified, the spin control for the Trayvon Martin case should be left up to those more accomplished, articulate, and critically minded. Mr. Ghetto and his fans just need to stop. His "political art" and caricaturized blackness is better suited for Stormfront or Fox News than as an act of support and awareness-raising for the struggles facing black and underclass communities in America.

Zimmerman, 28, appeared in court in a dark suit and gray tie, and, in a surprising move, took the stand. There, in a voice verging on meek, he apologized to the family of Trayvon Martin, the 17-year-old he admits he shot—but only, he says, in self-defense.

“I wanted to say I am sorry for the loss of your son,” he said to the parents, who attended the hearing in the central Florida city of Sanford, where the shooting took place. “I did not know how old he was. I thought he was a little bit younger than I am, and I did not know if he was armed or not.”

As a student of language and semiotics, I would suggest that the latter part of Zimmerman's statement is particularly rich with meaning. Context is key to the analysis of language. Language also constructs meaning through unstated assumptions shared by speaker and audience; oftentimes a speaker--here being Zimmerman--can run into a crisis of communication when the listener does not share his unstated priors and worldview.

Zimmerman is part of a collective consciousness that views all black people as adults regardless of their age. Because African Americans, especially men, have no right to self-defense in their person against White authority (it is rarely mentioned that Trayvon Martin had every right to "stand his ground") all bets are off. Zimmerman is working through this logic as he basically suggests that if Martin were younger, then the presumption of being armed and dangerous may not have applied.

However, because common sense dictates that all black men are armed, at all times, and have the magical ability to transform harmless objects into guns or knives, Zimmerman was acting under a reasonable person's standard of behavior. Anyone approaching a black man would naturally assume that the latter was especially and uniquely capable of deadly force. Thus, Zimmerman's appeal to shared community norms is a basic one: anyone in his position would have reasonably and naturally assumed that a black teenager wearing a hooded sweatshirt in the rain and carrying a bag of candy is an imminent and deadly threat.

Zimmerman's statement of "apology" to Trayvon Martin's family is one of the most honest and pronounced distillations of the White Gaze and its debased view of black humanity which we as a country have witnessed in many years. If one ever wondered about the existential dilemma faced by black masculinity in American society, or was searching for an object lesson in how black folks are "niggerized," look no farther than George Zimmerman's "apology" for committing murder.

Zimmerman can assault plain clothes cops, batter his fiancée, ignore police directives, stalk innocent people, carry a weapon in violation of his vaunted "black watch" rules, and shoot unarmed people without doubt or worry. Moreover, it takes a national uproar to even have him properly investigated and eventually arrested on suspicion of having committed murder. Let a black man do the same and see what happens. It does not take a leap of faith, or radical act of imagination, to understand how divergent the outcome would be.

Ultimately, Zimmerman is a murderous clown. As such, and in keeping with the national tragedy and three ring circus that is the color line in America, Zimmerman will find martyrdom as he is a stand-in for every white conservative ever accused of racism or racial bias. During the days and weeks to come, the script will be flipped as he becomes the object of a cause celebre. In this grotesque play, George Zimmerman is the good man done wrong by the system. Trayvon Martin is simply collateral damage.

Those blacks end up dead, in jail, or lying in the morgue for days unclaimed anyway. So what is the measure of a black man's life, one that is doomed to failure, against the shining star and bright future of "good" men like George Zimmerman?

Friday, April 20, 2012

President Obama is an unapologetic ghetto nerd. He loves Spiderman, reads Conan the Barbarian, and has been featured in more than one graphic novel. I am also sure that the President has been blessed with some great swag and goodies such as a sneak preview of the movie Prometheus , or the unedited original Star Wars Trilogy on Blu-ray.

To this point in his tenure, my favorite "space coon," ghetto nerd, Commander in Chief, has been linked with Star Trek on several occasions. During the campaign, the pundits wondered if he was more Spock or Captain Kirk (the consensus was that the cerebral assassin was more a Vulcan; John McCain got to play the role of space cowboy and gun boat diplomat James T. Kirk). President Obama also hosted Nichelle Nichols at the White House and posed for a soon to be iconic photo with the actress who Dr. King persuaded to remain on classic Trek because she was a trailblazing role-model for young women of color.

President Obama's enemies on the Right must also be Star Trek fans. In their desperate muckraking, they have "discovered" that Barack Obama once ate dog as a child. Making matters worse, his father was apparently judged to be "anti-white" by immigration officials in the United States and the United Kingdom (my goodness, a black man who grows up in colonial Africa may have some issues with white folks? the horrors and surprises never cease...).

In keeping with the Star Trek: The Next Generation TV series, it would seem that the sins of the father are now the sins of the son for President Obama. Because Conservatives actually see President Obama as a Klingon (a perpetual outsider and Other), the deeds and (dis)honor of his father passes down several generations. Even Obama's children's children would not be spared this shame!

Not content with voodoo beyond the grave zombie mind control Mau Mau politics where Obama's absent father controls him from the afterlife, they are channeling popular culture and the cinematic imagination to cook up foolishness in an effort to distract the mouth-breathing Right-wing populists from the Ayn Rand reality show which is the Tea Party GOP's check and mate for the American middle class.

The spectacle is entertaining, if not bizarre, theater. In all, this charade is symbolic of a fractured and sick political culture. For example, during the past four years President Obama has been accused of hating white people, being controlled by ghosts, faking his grades at Columbia, being a Manchurian candidate who was not a U.S. citizen, using crack and having sex with male prostitutes, drinking 40's at the White House with dangerous "gangsta" rappers, is a secret Muslim, and also a closet Socialist controlled by an evil cabal of Reverend Wright, Bill Ayers, Saul Alisnky, James Cone, Derrick Bell, and Frances Fox Piven. These conspiracy theories are not even internally consistent or coherent--but that is the point of the paranoid style, is it not?

This is all good sport that does more to demonstrate how out of touch with reality the Right-wing echo chamber and its supplicants actually are. However, the sins of the father should be turned around on any Conservatives who dare to utter such balderdash. Mitt Romney should be queried about his lineage and how he was socialized into a religion and culture which until very recently claimed that people of color were not fit for heaven, and are in fact subhumans stained by the Curse of Ham, destined for perpetual slavery at the end of the whip, and under the boots, of white people. Using the same logic, why was George W. Bush never asked about his grandfather, a man who helped finance the Nazi's rise to power?

Of course, the sins of the father for white folks specifically, and conservatives, in particular are not bound by rules of inter-generational culpability or guilt by association. White privilege is the freedom to be an individual, one unmoored both from history or the burdens of racial identity and group responsibility. Funny, this would seem to apply even to Star Trek and the Right's efforts to smear President Obama through the blood lineage of his father.

But I think the joke is on them this time. As a ghetto nerd, President Obama is likely smiling as he looks at his photo of Nichelle Nichols, thinks about the long arch of history, and bears his teeth, channeling his inner Klingon.

Moreover, as President Obama prepares for the 2012 election, he should heed the following proverb from his Klingon brethren: To those who are overly cautious, everything is impossible.

Being a Klingon ain't too bad after all; for some of us it is actually preferred.

Thursday, April 19, 2012

The research on white racial identity has evolved since coming to public prominence during the 1980's. At first, "Whiteness Studies" (as it was called at the time) was focused on the idea that White racial identity was a story of absence, typified by loss, and a parasitic relationship to blackness. This first wave was also derided by many conservatives, as well as more Left radical thinkers, as being merely a type of exploitative "white trash studies."

The anti-multiculturalism, dead white male crowd was hostile to any critical intervention that sought to highlight how questions of race and racial hierarchy were/are operative in American society. Forward thinking progressives and liberals were concerned that Whiteness Studies was simply another way of making white people central to conversations about racism. Consequently, Whiteness Studies did the work (however unintentional) of White Privilege even as it sought to problematize the concept.

Joel Olson was part of a second--or perhaps even third wave...depending on how one periodizes the genealogy--of scholars and students who worked to make a "critical" intervention against Whiteness. As a qualifier, "critical" is a much overused descriptor in academic writing. Oftentimes, critical is just a way of separating your own "original" contribution from those of other scholars. It has no real meaning beyond being an attention getter or flag that often signifies what are only minor differences in argument or content.

However, I would suggest that Critical Whiteness Studies was substantively different from earlier scholarship on the subject. The critical intervention here, a tradition I count myself part of, is that we now see Whiteness as not merely or only centered on absence. Rather, Whiteness has content, substance, and meaning. While Whiteness is still parasitic relative to blackness, it does have identifiable attributes, traits, contours, boundaries, characteristics, and substance.

In all, Whiteness is a type of property, privilege, normality, and invisibility. Whiteness is also something that its owners, and those who desire it, are deeply invested in protecting and maintaining. I would also add that Whiteness is a type of racial glue that masks and holds together other, often contentious and disparate identities, which white people as complex individuals possess.

Ultimately, the study of Whiteness, and the loose discipline we know as Critical Whiteness Studies, is about much more than white privilege. Yes, the latter is a foundational concept and useful entry point into the conversation for laypeople; white privilege is also a nice hook for those curious about what Whiteness means in American society on a day-to-day basis. But, it should be a beginning, and not an end, to the rigorous work that is exploring racial ideologies and their consequences for American society.

Psychology Today's "Between the Lines" is a column by Mikhail Lyubansky that explores the linkages between "race, culture, and community." Several of the pieces in that series have focused on White Privilege and how race continues to matter in "post-racial" America. The most recent entry is a nice complement to Joel Olson's work. There, Mikhail Lyubansky offers up a ten point list of what readers should know about White privilege.

Some of the suggestions are very useful for journeyman travelers (the idea that Peggy McIntosh's Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack is helpful, yet is just a beginning, and that reading McIntosh does not make you an expert on these matters; White Privilege is not to be minimized as a "historical" phenomenon, it is about the present; and the roots of the White Privilege discourse must be acknowledged as springing forth from the likes of Du Bois, James Baldwin, Harold Cruse, Gloria Anzaldua and Theodore Allen).

Mikhail Lyubansky's other observations are more inside baseball: anti-racism activities by whites can actually be paternalistic and reproduce many of the same dynamics which these same well-meaning white folks ostensibly desire to unsettle; what to do with white anti-racist activists who are now the face of advocacy on these issues, as they ironically make money off of white racism?

In keeping with the idea that Critical Whiteness Studies should be centered on rigorous inquiry in the service of theory building as we strive to more accurately model how race, power, and social relationships interact, there are two points in Mikhail Lyubansky's essay that are problematic.

First, he suggests that:

8. Racial-minority privilege exists and serves an important function. I'm not saying that it is equivalent to white privilege — the power differential alone makes that impossible — but there is such a thing as racial-minority privilege. In marginalized spaces (also called counter spaces), this means that people of color generally have the privilege of speaking about race without having their point of view challenged solely on the basis of their racial identity or racial appearance.

Mikhail Lyubansky offers up a thorough qualification of this claim and how it relates to colorism in black and brown communities, as well as issues of intersectionality. However, I am more interested in the first principle: how can racial minorities (and this holds for gays and lesbians, and also women) have any type of "privilege," be it relative or absolute, in a society and set of social institutions which are prefaced on white superiority and white domination? For example, black and brown people may have what are problematically called "safe spaces" on colleges and universities. But, these "safe spaces" are prefaced on the idea that their voices are not heard or listened to elsewhere. Of symbolic and practical import, these "safe spaces" are often ghettoized in the Office of Multicultural Affairs or Diversity Relations.

The second problematic is as follows:

9. The privilege discourse is missing an important element:empathy and compassion for the oppressor. Social justice activist, Kit Miller (a White woman), observes that empathy has a hard time flowing upstream. Few are more starved for empathy than those who have structural power, because they are often dehumanized on the basis of having that power. How many of us, for example, see police officers as individual human beings motivated by the same universal human needs (e.g., love, acceptance, contribution, mutuality) as the rest of us? How about the politicians belonging to the political party you dislike most?In the context of race relations, this means that there is not much empathy coming to white folks from across the racial divide. This, of course, is perfectly logical. It is certainly not the responsibility of the oppressed and marginalized to take care of the oppressor's emotional needs. Suggesting otherwise would be, at best, an egregious expression of white privilege. Yet, it is also true that those who oppress others (and certainly those who do not perpetrate oppression themselves but stand by while others do so) have likely themselves experienced oppression and are themselves harmed by their own actions or lack of thereof.

While it certainly impacts people of color disproportionately and more negatively, racism (and racial color-blindness) hurts everyone, even those who are part of the majority group...

It is often not obvious, but to maintain their status, those who are in power must justify their behavior to themselves and that requires a partial loss of their humanity.

Mikhail Lyubansky's take here is very defensive. He is desperately trylng to avoid the smear known as "reverse racism." However, when one proceeds from an anxiety about a specious and disengenous concept such as reverse racism, your argument is flawed from its inception. The idea that those with power are starved for empathy also strikes me as the worst type of feel good tripe that is offered up in a moment when some white folks feel aggrieved, or their feelings hurt, when the institutional and personal power afforded by Whiteness is called out and made transparent.

Perhaps, on a cognitive and philosophical level I am incapable of understanding Mikhail Lyubansky's version of "the love principle." Moreover, Mikhail Lyubansky's social justice take--that one needs to show empathy for those who are deeply invested in maintaining their disproportionate power and control over society to the disadvantage of people of color in mass--as Whiteness works to maximize the life chances of its owners, participants, and allies (to the detriment of others), is simply a bridge too far.

Am I being unfair in these critiques? Is my critical project being handicapped by an inability to both empathize and relate to the perilous anxieties and fears of those who we call "White" in America? What is your critical take on these conversations?

Tuesday, April 17, 2012

The second honoree in WARN's series on white criminals is a good one. Quigonjin, one of our loyal crime stoppers, was kind enough to send in some information on this foul brigand highwayman. Always remember: if you see something you should say something! White crime only flourishes when we ignore their obviously suspicious behavior.

Given that white people have a particular propensity for cheating and subterfuge, as evidenced by the fact they are more likely to be financially rich, the behavior of William Todd should not be a surprise. White criminals are particularly earnest in their trade--be it looting the finances of millions of Americans in the fraud that precipitated the Great Recession--or committing 10 felonies in 9 hours.

People of color simply do not have it in them to commit crimes on such a scale, and with these high levels of speed and efficiency. Once more, white crime is especially pernicious, threatening, and loathsome. Responsible Americans everywhere should pay close to attention to the white men in their midst as these folks are capable of criminal deeds that astound the mind--and apparently they have a love of marking their turf with human feces.

Be scared, very scared by white men such as William Todd. Because they are pathological--and as such often quite skilled at hiding their predilections--many such men could be ticking time bombs, hiding as your "normal" children, neighbors, husbands, or coworkers. Whiteness is invisible. This trait only contributes to its owners ability to commit crimes as they escape without consequence or arrest.

****

One man traveling through Tennessee allegedly completed a crime spree with such urgency that even local police say they'd never seen anything like it.

William Todd, 24, is accused of committing 10 felonies in just nine hours while going on a "terror" through Nashville.

"He was just on a terror. I've never seen anything like this before," Sgt. Tony Blackburn, told WSMV.

Todd is not even a native of Nashville. Police say he traveled there on a Greyhound bus from Kentucky before beginning his unprecedented crime spree. Upon arriving in Nashville, he allegedly broke into a local business called The Slaughterhouse, where he stole a Taser, revolver and shotgun. He then proceeded to steal a T-shirt from the Slaughterhouse before burning the business to the ground.

Todd then moved on to a local bar, where he held four patrons at gunpoint. He robbed all four individuals but not before using the Taser on one and pistol-whipping another.

Just five minutes later, Todd moved onto his next alleged felony, carjacking a taxi driver at gunpoint. After leaving the cab, he used the credit cards he had stolen from the bar patrons to buy food.

"He was able to find the Walmart on Nolensville. He goes there and purchased $199 worth of items," Sgt. Blackburn said.

And that was only the beginning.

In the early hours of the following morning, Todd then broke into a local hotel's law office. He not only vandalized the offices but also then defecated on a desk and smeared his feces on some of the framed law degrees.

Leaving the offices, Todd then reportedly robbed several of the hotel guests. He knocked on their door pretending to be a female housekeeper, then robbed them at gunpoint. He was also reportedly crying while doing so.

He then briefly paused for a change in personal appearance.

"We have him on video leaving the hotel with a shaved head," Sgt. Blackburn said.

After crashing his stolen cab into a local parking garage, Todd then quickly held another taxi driver at gunpoint. When police finally apprehended Todd, he was hiding atop Opryland, partially submerged in a water-cooling vat. The Metro Fire Department was brought in to assist in Todd's removal from the vat, using a bucket and ladder truck.His bond has reportedly been set at $180,000.

"He rode the Greyhound bus and had a layover, then left in blue lights," Sgt. Blackburn said. "There definitely could be more charges. We hope that there are no more victims."

Tips and Support Are Always Welcome

Who is Chauncey DeVega?

I have been a guest on the BBC, National Public Radio, Ring of Fire Radio, Ed Schultz, Sirius XM's Make it Plain, Joshua Holland's Alternet Radio Hour, the Thom Hartmann radio show, the Burt Cohen show, and Our Common Ground.

I have also been interviewed on the RT Network and Free Speech TV.

I am a contributing writer for Salon and Alternet.

My writing has also been featured by Newsweek, The New York Daily News, Raw Story, The Huffington Post, and the Daily Kos.

My work has also been referenced by MSNBC, The Washington Post, USA Today, The Atlantic, The Christian Science Monitor, the Associated Press, Chicago Sun-Times, Raw Story, The Washington Spectator, Media Matters, The Gothamist, Fader, XOJane, The National Memo, The Root, Detroit Free Press, San Diego Free Press, the Global Post, The Lost Angeles Blade as well as online magazines and publications such as Slate, The Week, The New Republic, Buzzfeed, Counterpunch, Truth-Out, Pacific Standard, Common Dreams, The Daily Beast, The Washington Times, The Nation, RogerEbert.com, Ebony, and The Chronicle of Higher Education.

Fox News, Breitbart, Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Juan Williams, Herman Cain, Alex Jones, World Net Daily, Twitchy, the Free Republic, the National Review, NewsBusters, the Media Research Council, Project 21, and Weasel Zippers have made it known that they do not like me very much.